Trudeau says our racist past haunts our present. He’s right.

On March 9, Justin Trudeau made a speech castigating Prime Minister Stephen Harper for his views on the niqab issue and civil liberties in general.

“These are troubling times,” Trudeau said. “Across Canada, and especially in my home province, Canadians are being encouraged by their government to be fearful of one another.

“For me, this is both unconscionable and a real threat to Canadian liberty. For me, it is basic truth that prime ministers of liberal democracies ought not to be in the business of telling women what they can and cannot wear on their head during public ceremonies.”

“You can dislike the niqab,” Trudeau went on to say. “You can hold it up as a symbol of oppression. You can try to convince your fellow citizens that it is a choice they ought not to make. This is a free country. Those are your rights.

“But those who would use the state’s power to restrict women’s religious freedom and freedom of expression indulge the very same repressive impulse that they profess to condemn. It is a cruel joke to claim you are liberating people from oppression by dictating in law what they can and cannot wear.”

At this point, the columnists-who-know-what-is-best-for-us started to spin out because Trudeau mentioned many of our past sins with respect to minorities in this country. They told us that, somehow, we should just avoid talking about this history when we talk about treatment of minorities today.

Which is utter rot. I reserve judgment on Mr. Trudeau generally — and I surprise myself now by springing to his defence — but on this point he’s entitled to be defended by all decent citizens.

Surely we can’t simply ignore our past in dealing with issues we face today — particularly since the events Trudeau mentions didn’t happen all that long ago. Many of the serious examples of Canadian intolerance he cited happened within my (admittedly long) lifetime.

I was not alive 100 years ago, of course, at the time of the disgraceful Komagata Maru affair, which saw 340 Sikhs, 24 Muslims and 12 Hindus — all British subjects — refused entry into Canada at Vancouver and sent back to India.

I was very much alive in 1942 when Japanese-Canadians were expelled from the British Columbia coast and interned without charges or trials, their property seized and sold for peanuts.

(I pause here to admit, as I did a few weeks ago, that my father “bought” a factory from the “trustee” for the Japanese at 10 cents on the dollar, and with this “loot” I was educated and raised. No doubt my conscience bothers me, but in the words of Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio, “Always let your conscience be your guide.”)

The Vancouver Sun, recently and commendably, exposed its conscience by re-printing a 1942 editorial which it admitted was racist.

“The Sun has repeatedly pointed out that during 50 years of Oriental immigration to this continent, British Columbia has consistently fought against the Japanese infiltration … and just as regularly we have been over-ruled by Ottawa,” the original editorial said.

“Now, for excellent military reasons, the Japanese are being moved inland. Can anyone blame us if we hope that by May Day we shall have seen the last of them — and for all time?

“We shall have to admit that we are gladly using a necessity of the war to give us a solution, a permanent solution if possible, of an immigration that was thoroughly distasteful and objectionable.”

When I was a boy in the 1940s, there was a popular restaurant chain in Vancouver called White Lunch. This, courtesy of Vancouver-based AHA Media:

A number of White Lunch restaurants operated in the city (and) included 865 Granville, 737 West Pender and 714 West Pender. The White Lunch name reflected a policy of serving and hiring only white people. The civic government reinforced racism in the culinary industry by passing a 1937 ordinance that prohibited white women from working in Chinatown.

Whites believed they had an appointed place in the Darwinist order and needed to protect white women from ‘lascivious Orientals.’ A delegation of 16 waitresses from three restaurants marched to City Hall on Sept. 24, 1937 to protest the ordinance but the mayor refused them a hearing. Restaurant proprietors had their licences revoked if they failed to observe the civic ruling.

Incidentally, Canadians of Chinese extraction didn’t get the vote until 1947. Japanese-Canadians didn’t get the vote until 1949 and it wasn’t until 1960 that First Nations members were allowed to cast a ballot.

The Harper government has, with full knowledge of the consequences, taken a public position in inflammatory language at a time when they knew, or ought to have known, this would bring out the worst in some people.

Most of us can remember when some Canadians thoughtlessly overreacted because Sikhs wearing turbans were enrolled in the RCMP. Then we had the disgraceful and ridiculous spectacle in 1993 of Sikhs being denied admission to the Canadian Legion because wearing a turban was tendentiously said to be “disrespectful to the Queen.”

It wasn’t until the 1970s that the courts began to give First Nations their rights; only very recently have these rights have actually materialized. Their struggle continues.

Now, to Mr. Trudeau’s alleged offence.

In May 1939, after the terrifying episode of Kristallnacht, the SS St. Louis fled Nazi Germany with 937 Jewish refugees aboard, sailing for Cuba. The ship was refused permission to dock. The United States and Canada also spurned the passengers. The St. Louis sailed back to Europe. Belgium, the Netherlands, Britain and France accepted the refugees — but more than 250 of those refugees were killed in the Holocaust after the Nazis invaded Western Europe.

Here’s how Trudeau referenced this event in his speech: “We should all shudder to hear the same rhetoric that led to a ‘none is too many’ immigration policy toward Jews in the ’30s and ’40s being used to raise fears against Muslims today.”

The wording of that statement is critically important, given a great many critics — including NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair— have accused Trudeau of conflating the treatment of Muslims with the Holocaust.

He did nothing of the sort. He didn’t mention the Holocaust, directly or by inference, and has not mentioned it since, despite the baiting efforts of the Tories and now Mulcair and the NDP.

The policy he mentioned predated the Holocaust. The Jews in question were fleeing because of Kristallnacht — the violent anti-Jewish pogroms which took place on Nov. 9 and 10, 1938, throughout Germany.

If anyone in May 1939 had predicted that a civilized nation would murder some six million people — including the mentally ill and disabled, Roma people and homosexuals — he would have been considered mad.

Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney did raise the Holocaust the day after the Trudeau speech when he said that Bill C-51 seeks to criminalize pro-terrorist speech because “the Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers, it began with words.”

Defence Minister Jason Kenney, who as immigration minister introduced the niqab ban during citizenship ceremonies in 2011, joined in, tweeting this jab: “It is obscene to conflate the essentially public nature of the citizenship oath with an anti-Semitic bar on refugees fleeing the Holocaust.”

But Trudeau did nothing of the sort. The responsibility for raising of the temperature of this debate rests entirely with the Harper government.

After this long, 100-year odyssey from the Komagata Maru to Harper, it seemed that we’d reached the point where most Canadians truly were a gentle and tolerant people. Our maturity allowed both the free speech to criticize and the freedom to do that which does no harm. Then disaster struck in the person of Stephen Harper — and a government with a petty, mean-spirited and vindictive approach to those who don’t agree with them.

It must be remembered that it was Harper and his cabinet who got involved when the Federal Court of Canada held that a Muslim woman was entitled to wear a niqab during a citizenship swearing-in ceremony. They could have — should have — left the issue to the justice system for resolution.

Moreover, they spouted their provocative language at a time when some Canadians, thanks to the Harper government, were scared stiff of the threat of militant Islam.

This is not rocket science. Fear brings out the worst in all of us.

During the First World War, Germans in Canada were widely discriminated against (so were Dachshund dogs, believe it or not). The town of Berlin in Ontario changed its name to Kitchener.

During the Second World War, in Kerrisdale where I lived, people boycotted Barers Bakery because of its German name. (It was owned by a Dutch couple.) The name of the German Shepherd dog breed was changed to Alsatian. And we know what happened to Japanese-Canadians. This is the sort of thing prime ministers are supposed to recognize and take care to avoid.

Let me put it plainly — the Harper government has, with full knowledge of the consequences, taken a public position in inflammatory language at a time when they knew, or ought to have known, this would bring out the worst in some people. Under these circumstances, how can one possibly criticize Trudeau for reminding us of where we have been in our less attractive moments and urging us to remember our history in dealing with human rights today?

Perhaps this was a matter of political opportunism. Frankly, I don’t care — because the message was important on its own terms.

My hope is that we all calm down now and go back to being what we were before this scary government took over the reins of power — decent, caring, tolerant people, conscious not only of our own rights, but those of others.

Rafe Mair writes for The Tyee, where his column appears every other week. He is also a founding contributor to The Common Sense Canadian. You can find his previous columns here.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.

What a fine piece of journalism!!
The always engaging Mair writes so poignantly about an issue that has been terribly twisted and
misrepresented by far too many. Thank Heaven people are far savvier than the press and pundits, pollsters
and lobbyists allow!
Love the quote from Jiminy Cricket!!! Such memories and such truth!
Kudos!

I feel like Rafe Mair just keeps getting better.
I heard Chief Stewart Phillip, who I’ve found to be a thoughtful, eloquent, and reasonable person, say that in all his years in politics, he’s never dealt with a group as openly hostile to aboriginal people as the present Conservatives.
I also wonder, when Canada received an international award from the UN during the Mulroney years for leadership in the care of refugees, why the present government slanders them in the press regularly.
And I wonder why it is nearly impossible for family-based cultures to bring their families here … such as India, China, or anywhere in Asia, where most immigrants come from … unless it’s another way of extending a read-between-the-lines middle finger to people they don’t want to come here.
Interracial dating and marriage is so common in B.C. that I doubt most people put a lot of thought into it… so what is the point of all the polite bait-and-switch policies that seem to undermine a welcoming environment for different groups?
Diversity is not an albatross, it’s a strong rope of many coloured cords.

Thank you for this beautiful and enlightening piece of journalism. Nice to see some journalists take their jobs seriously while others just want to see their name in print so they say and actually discuss the baloney the government hands out. Whatever the government wants you to believe usually the ‘opposite’ is true.

again: “it seemed that we’d reached the point where most Canadians truly were a
gentle and tolerant people. Our maturity allowed both the free speech to
criticize and the freedom to do that which does no harm. Then disaster
struck in the person of Stephen Harper — and a government with a petty,
mean-spirited and vindictive approach to those who don’t agree with
them.”

That’s it exactly. Thank you for your eloquent voice, Mr Mair. I’m so happy to see more seniors speaking up in a way I hope the young folks can hear.

Thanks for this column. Maybe Mr. Mair could be our fact checker for the coming election. And I am serious…we will need 100s of fact checkers to ‘out’ Harper and his head nodders when they go over the line and they will, because its what they do and do well..hoping no one will notice and most of the time Canadians don’t and are too busy to check if what the government says is true or not…

I always thought that our CBC gave us the news based on the facts…But lately they seem to have fallen into the pattern of reading what Harper puts out with little or no rebuttal. In the case of Trudeau’s ‘teachable’ and Prime-ministerial speech and the resulting spin that Harper brought to bear on his inspiring speech was atrocious. But what is even more atrocious is that so many so-called journalists continued the talking points put out by the PMO and then Mulcair following their example… Now, finally, a journalist (and there are a couple) with moral backbone has written a column dispelling the myths that Harper weaves to distract from his hate speech of the other.. I hope that Mr. Mair will be asked as a guest on shows like P&P and Power Play to rebut the smears and lies that Harper spreads, and in the case of what Trudeau said in his speech, the networks and newspapers should do the right thing and write and speak about what he actually said and a panel explain just what Mr. Mair has written, and I quote again…

” Here’s how Trudeau referenced this event in his speech: “We should
all shudder to hear the same rhetoric that led to a ‘none is too many’
immigration policy toward Jews in the ’30s and ’40s being used to raise
fears against Muslims today.”

The wording of that statement is critically important, given a great
many critics — including NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair— have accused Trudeau
of conflating the treatment of Muslims with the Holocaust.

He did nothing of the sort. He didn’t mention the Holocaust, directly
or by inference, and has not mentioned it since, despite the baiting
efforts of the Tories and now Mulcair and the NDP.

The policy he mentioned predated the Holocaust. The Jews in
question were fleeing because of Kristallnacht — the violent anti-Jewish
pogroms which took place on Nov. 9 and 10, 1938, throughout Germany…”

I for one, have never believed Harper’s hyped up rhetoric delivered in monotone soundbites. They are just words without depth or sincerity, a distraction from Harper’s own woeful leadership. Oh Canada…how far we have fallen under Harper’s reign…

While I continue to hold a long list of reservations about Justin Trudeau, the speech he gave (regardless if it was he or someone else who wrote it) was exceptional. In fact it was the most concrete, valuable, precise, relevant, and honest speeches I’ve heard from a Canadian politicians in years. So many years, I can’t actually say.